1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to outdoor wears, such as fishing and hunting waders, and more particularly to an edge joint structure for strongly and firmly connecting a waterproof thermal insulation panel with a breathable fabric panel for producing wader or similar outdoor wear which features a thermal insulating leg portion made of reinforced waterproof, breathable and laminate material and a fabric upper portion made of waterproof and breathable fabric material such as Nylon or the like.
2. Description of Related Arts
Wader 1 or similar outdoor wear provided in market for outdoor sports such as hunting and fishing, as shown in FIG. 1, are constructed from top to bottom with various kinds of wader material A10 such as "NEOPRENE". These conventional wader materials have waterproof and thermal insulation features enabling the users to wade through a stream and keep the body temperature in cold water.
The conventional wader material A10, as shown in FIG. 2, includes a waterproof, breathable layer A11 made of foaming material or synthetic rubber, an outer cover layer A12 made of flexible cloth material such as nylon jersey knit or plush, and an inner lining layer A13 made of fabric or jersey.
The seam A14 formed at the connection between the right and left panels, as shown in FIG. 1, is constructed by a conventional edge joint structure that simply adheres two end edges of the right and left panels edge-edge together and then sealedly covers with two fabric tapes A15 at both sides respectively. Such a gluing type edge joint structure is a kind of weak structure because the area of connection is limited to the cross section area of the respective end edge, i.e. the width .times.the thickness.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,022,096 suggests another kind of edge joint structure that the stretchable laminate is stitched by thread to the non-stretch laminate and the holes and gaps in the seam are sealed with tape. However, the connection between the laminates is relatively weak since the connection is based on stitching.
As mentioned above, the entire wader is constructed with foaming laminated material for thermal insulation purpose. However, due to the fact that most of the time the wearers (fishermen or hunters) are merely get their leg portions wet or immersed their leg into cold water. Sometimes, the wearers may also need to immerse their waist portion in water. But, there is nearly unnecessary to have the wearers' chest portions immersed in water because it may be too deep for them to freely and effectively operate their fishing rods or hunting rifles.
It is absolutely truth that the foaming laminated material is good at thermal insulation especially for the legs immersed in cold water. However, the wearer's chest portion and even the waist portion above water may feel uncomfortable and hot during warm weather since they are covered by such thermal insulating material.
A solution to the above shortcoming of the conventional outdoor wear is to use thermal insulating material to construct the lower leg portion and use thin fabric material to construct the upper chest portion and even the waist portion. However, both the conventional end-gluing type and stitching type edge joint structures as described fail to provide a firm and durable connection. Especially, stitching is not strong enough for connection when it is used for making tough or heavy duty clothes. The end-gluing type or stitching type end edge structure may easy to break when a horizontal force is applied to the two laminates. So, the conventional edge joint structure is not a reasonable structure to provide liable and good connection between the thermal insulating panel and the fabric panel.